Transforming Food Systems Through Education: NY Sun Works & Global Partners Develop EPIC Solution

October 29, 2021

NY Sun Works was selected to join the Food Systems Game Changers Lab, a global solutions accelerator organized by the Rockefeller Foundation, EAT, IDEO, and Thought for Food. The Lab tapped an international coalition of educators, entrepreneurs, and innovators to answer this question: How might we build a better food future for everyone, everywhere?  

Over the 13 weeks Solutions Accelerator, the 505 participants from 85 countries came together, in cohorts organized by policy specialty, to create action agendas designed to build a healthier, more sustainable, and more equitable global food system.  NY Sun Works’ cohort, Building Food Literacy through Education, comprised of professors, advocates, and nonprofit leaders across the world, developed, literally, an EPIC solution.  Education = Power in Choice, or EPIC, will use transformative education to engage children, their advocates (such as families, teachers, elders, and health practitioners), and their communities in sustainable, ecological and healthy food systems practices.  EPIC’s goal: to empower a generation of highly-literate food citizens through school and community-based programming. View the final report and our solution here.

Our group is now speaking with regional, national, and global policy-makers, including the U.N. Food Programme, to explore how our solution can be scaled and developed. It’s been an honor to collaborate with this dynamic international group of innovators and we’re excited to see what comes next in this very important undertaking.  As the final report states, “As we look to 2050, the mounting pressures to deliver affordable, available, accessible, nourishing, regeneratively and humanely produced diets will take unparalleled levels of global collaboration, agenda-setting, and innovation. To rectify these multiple and quickly expanding crises, we need much more than change – we need transformation.”